*Note to readers: This story is about the fetish of attractive women who smoke. If you hate smoking, please move on to another story. Don't bother telling me about your poor Aunt Millie who died of lung cancer or your Uncle Joe who has emphysema from smoking as it won't change the way I feel one iota. We all die from something.
**Intro: My girlfriend, Kay, recently told me about this show where people who've never even met agree to married 'at first sight.' (Many of you have undoubtedly heard or it or even watched it as it's been on for 4-5 years.) She knows I don't care for reality TV, but what caught her attention was a new husband and wife where the wife found out right after she married him that the husband smokes. His smoking is a very big deal to her, and she nags him endlessly about it.
As my male self, I never smoke. Ever. But Callie smokes and couldn't be Callie if she didn't. Kay strongly dislikes it, but knew it was a part of the 'girl' she fell in love with so as long as Callie goes outside, Kay tolerates it. Unlike my story characters, Kay expects Callie to brush her teeth and use mouthwash before coming to bed. Anyway, that's why this story line caught my attention.
Kay then filled me in on some of the unlikely pairings from past shows, and I had a great idea for a story; one in which the new husband's ultimate dream and biggest fantasy finally comes true.
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"Owen? Congratulations! You're one of our six finalists and we've found a wife for you."
"Are you serious? Oh, my God! This is incredible!"
"Tell us how you're feeling."
"Wow. How am I feeling? I'm feeling...excited, nervous, happy, scared. Yeah, all of those things all at once. This is just so...amazing!"
Another one of the 'relationship experts' was on the phone in another room calling his prospective bride.
"Reagan? Congratulations! You're one of our six finalists and we've found a husband for you."
"What? Are you kidding me? I'm getting married?" There was a loud squeal followed by more disbelief. "Is this for real? Am I really getting married?"
"Yes, you are, Reagan. We've found someone we feel you'll be potentially very happy with. We see quite a few strengths you can each pull from the other. All right, you have just three weeks before your wedding so I'll let you go. We'll be in touch often and again, congratulations!"
Both of the finalists were in stunned disbelief at having been selected as finalists for the popular reality-TV show called Married at First Sight. Both had hoped, but never really believed, they'd be chosen out of the thousands of people who were now sending in videos explaining why they should be drafted to get 'married at first sight'. But both Owen Palmer, a 31-year old software developer, and Reagan Delmore, a 27-year old caterer, beat the odds and made the final cut and had been paired with each other.
Both people immediately began calling their closest friends and family members to share the good news. Well, in some cases, their family and friends thought this was either ill-advised or an outright mistake. After all, who in their right mind would marry someone they'd never met or even seen before?
Anyone who'd watched the show knew that one of the future spouses occasionally nearly stopped the wedding before it even took place. As soon as they walked down the aisle and laid eyes on their future husband or wife, the lack of physical attraction caused them to call time out to sit and really think it through. That may have been all theater staged for ratings, but it seems very likely it was borne of genuine concern as physical attraction is a very important aspect of any relationship for most people.
In those cases, viewers watched all of the previous excitement of having been selected, shopping for the perfect wedding dress, and all the happy chatter seen and heard as the show followed them around the three weeks before the wedding, vanish in an instant. Instead of hearing yet another glib comment about 'how there would be challenges to be overcome them with hard work and commitment', the future bride was sitting outside the wedding chapel crying and asking (into the ever-present camera), "Can I really do this? Can I marry a guy I find completely unattractive to me?"
"But what if he isn't attractive?" Reagan's sister Meagan asked her. "Seriously? What will you do if you look at him and think, 'Oh, my God. I don't even want to kiss that guy let alone sleep with him'?"
Reagan dismissed her sister's concerns with a flip comment like, "The experts wouldn't pair me with someone like that. I told them physical attraction is very important to me."
Reagan was the kind of young woman most men would call cute or even pretty. Some might be generous and call her beautiful, but most would not. She didn't turn a lot of heads when she walked into a room, but she was not in any way unattractive. An honest assessment was that she was above-average looking but not 'hot'.
Even so, she had high, almost unrealistic expectations in men, and that was undoubtedly a prime reason why she was still unmarried in spite of her constant protestations she'd like nothing more than to have a devoted, loving husband.
"I know you don't want to hear this, Reagan, but you need to learn to give more." Her younger sister started to object, but she kept talking. "You know exactly what you want and you have all these demands for any guy in your life. But it seems to me, you have very little idea about how to give back. People who only take are sponges, Reagan. Maybe you could try a little harder to give back rather than just demand and take. Okay, I'm done. You can blast me now." And Reagan did blast her, but most of the blasting came from a deep sense of guilt caused by knowing her older sister was absolutely correct. That was a huge problem for her and she knew it. She'd known about it for years. Changing old habits was the hard part.
In Owen's case, it was his best friend since elementary school, Art Langer, who thought this was a really bad idea.
"Dude, what if you see some fat chick walk down the aisle? What if she's like super religious or some kind of nutty political partisan? You're a laid-back kind of guy, man. The last thing you need is a woman who's all about order and tidiness and you know, the kind who says, 'A place for everything and everything in it's place'. How are you gonna deal with someone like that when you live and work out of what could best be called 'organized chaos'?"
"Being easy-going is my best quality, Arty-Art who let a fart. So even if she is a little hyper, being a chill kind of guy allows me to let it roll right off my back. And she doesn't have to be a total babe for me to love her. As long as she's not really un-attractive, and if she's dedicated to making a marriage work, it'll be cool."
Owen really was a good-looking guy and the show's so-called experts had factored that into account. In fact, he was the kind women would and often did call a 'hottie.' As noted, in the past, these experts often paired one hot person with an average person, and it had created tons of controversy which was good for ratings. One such couple, Doug and Jamie, where Jamie was much better looking than her proposed match, had managed to work through it and ended up not only staying together but having children. They were one of the three original couples to marry at first sight on Season One and the show was still making money off them several years down the road by 'checking in on them' from time to time.
The disparity between Owen and Reagan was roughly equal to that of Doug and Jamie, but in this case, of course, the man was the clearly better-looking partner.
Their differential in looks would be evident but probably wouldn't be too controversial since Reagan was the picky one. What would however, was that Owen smoked, and smoking was something Reagan found off-putting in the extreme. In their favor, both of them were the kind who hated giving up on something, so the hope was that both of them would work very hard to find ways to either accept or learn to live with the other person's behavior without walking out of the marriage during 'the experiment'.
